Moving to Web Apps (or not)

Posted on Jul 16 2014

I’m a desktop kind of guy. I prefer desktop PCs, desktop programs, desktop programming. But I am also a cross-platform guy. Hence my interest in Java, and by extension, Clojure. But I would like those things to run on my tablet and (other people’s) phone. Doing that with Java seems to be more work than it is worth.

Hence, I’ve been considering web apps as a possible future direction. (Seems everyone else has figured this out already.) For the past couple of months, I’ve been looking at JavaScript as a possible avenue forward. After this small amount of exposure I just have to say “Yuck!” I can’t believe in this day and age that JavaScript is considered a real language. It seems like an ad hoc collection of syntactic flotsam held together with bubble gum and duct tape. Much nastier than even BASIC. Probably worse than PHP. (Might still be better than Perl.)

So how to proceed? Seems like ClojureScript might be a good path. It would let me write in a language I like, but the build process is a bit arcane and seems a little fragile. And there seem to be a lot of gotchas about what parts of Clojure are actually supported. Or maybe just go with a full-blown Lisp. The Racket version of Scheme seems really nice.